Genesis 11:1-26 | Babel

Have you had that moment where you are talking to someone, and you swear you have had the exact same conversation with them before? I think we have all had a déjà vu-type experience at least once. That moment where you are pretty sure you may have lived this moment before, but you aren’t sure why or where or when. Scientists think it is the recognition center of your brain firing off before your assessment part thinks through what is happening. A misfire that gives you the feeling of something familiar even while it is unfolding before you. It may or may not be the same, but you think immediately it IS the same.

That is one suggestion as to why we have those experiences. The older I get, the more I think we likely HAVE had the conversation before. You likely HAVE similarly walked into the room with the same light and same breakfast cooking. You HAVE brushed your teeth and stubbed your toe on the bed before. Those things have happened because there are only so many conversations one person can have, so many breakfasts you really make, and so many ways you stand there while you brush your teeth and then wander aimlessly. I scare poor Laura at least once or twice a week simply by walking down the hall or into her office area. At some point that will have to feel like a repeated experience for both of us!

Review: Genesis Repeating

We have talked several times about how the flood account is dealing with the question of a redo. One of the points of what happens in the flood is for God to answer the question we all might have at one point in our lives: “What would happen if everyone were able to start over and give things another try?” And what we see is that people make the same mistakes. Our sin is still the problem. But in addition to the big question of a redo and what would happen, we are also seeing many other aspects of the creation account and the beginning of Genesis redone as we get to the account of Noah and the flood and the aftermath.

In the beginning, God creates the earth, separates the waters, and creates a place for Adam and Eve to live—the garden of Eden. In the flood, God opens the heavens and the earth and covers the entire planet in water again. He then causes a wind to blow and, again, separates the waters so that a land might be made for Noah, his family, and the animals to have a safe place to exit.

Adam and Eve are given a covenant and a mandate from God to be fruitful and multiply and spread over the face of the earth. God renews this same covenant with Noah and gives the same mandate for dominion and spreading to Noah and his family.

Sadly, Adam and Eve chose to sin. In doing so, their eyes were opened, and they realized they were naked. They tried to cover themselves, but God ultimately covered them properly with animal skins. Similarly, Noah sins and gets drunk. He too is found to be naked. Like God and his grace, Noah’s godly sons cover him up properly.

Things are repeating. And one of the most notable repeating patterns is sin. Knowing that people, me and you, are the problem and the main problem is our sin, we shouldn’t be surprised to see the story repeat again and again. There are only so many ways to sin. Yet in the midst of our sin, God is doing something. God has a plan. God is moving things forward.

And God moves things forward through covenants. God uses covenants to mark his major movements forward with his people throughout Scripture. God uses covenants, his promises based on his ability and his sureness (not our ability of sureness) to show us more and more of His plan. In the midst of sin, God’s covenants are markers of his plan and his promises to move everything forward to our renewed life together with him again. With each new covenant we see more of the plan of God to save his people and bring them back to himself.

But God also renews or repeats covenants. That is what we have seen here with Noah. The covenant with Noah is largely a renewed and expanded covenant as he made with Adam and Eve. That is why it says that God “establishes” his covenant with Noah in Genesis 9:8-11. The covenant is being repeated, renewed, and fixed as something permanent, as shown by what God does in saving Noah and promising to never wipe out people again. That is what the author means by “established.”

And with each renewed covenant we see how God’s character and desires stay the same across time. God will continue to love his people. God will continue to make his plan happen. In renewed covenants, we often get an affirmation of God’s character, and in that covenant renewal we see God in new ways that help us to know him more.

As we track God’s covenants through Scripture, we are often seeing:

The Same Plan AND More of the Plan

The Same God AND More of God

In fact, that is something we should notice in Scripture in general, even outside of covenants. Often when stories seem to be new or different, it is God showing us how the plan is the same, but he is also revealing more details about the plan. Often when the stories seem to be the same or similar, it is God showing us how HE is the same but also showing us more about HIMSELF and his character.

Both aspects can happen in every story, but it seems to me there is a pattern, especially in the covenants. New covenants—like the covenant with Adam & Eve, Abraham, Israel, and David—seem to be showing us more about God’s salvific plan and how he is going to accomplish what he has promised he will do. Whenever God renews a covenant—like with Noah, the second time with Abraham, the second time with Israel—we are often learning more about God and HIS character than anything else.

Genesis 11: Connections

That is the process we are going through here in Genesis 9-11. We are in a pattern of repeating, seeing God’s plan, and finding we are also seeing much more about God and his character.

At the end of Genesis 10, as we saw last week, we had another genealogy. That section really belongs with this section in many ways. I almost made Jack read THAT list again along with today’s passage—but out of love for you all, I only had him do this section. This is the same pattern as what we saw in Genesis four and five. There (in Genesis four and five) we saw that the first genealogy was a broad, overall genealogy of many different people. The point was to show how the story was moving ahead even though people were dying. Then, after a broad genealogy, we had some information about the people and what they were doing. And then, finally, a specific genealogy of the holy line God was working through (Seth’s family there).

We see the same thing here. Genesis 10 ends with a broad genealogy. At the beginning of chapter 11, we have more information about the people (the Babel account). And then we follow a specific line of people through Shem to Abraham at the end of Genesis 11.

In Genesis 4, in the intermission between the genealogies, we saw the creativity and beauty of God’s image bearers using what they had for good. Jabal was the father of shepherding and tent-dwelling. Jubal is the father of the lyre and the pipe. Tubal-Cain created things of bronze and iron. In Seth’s godly line, Enoch walks with God and is no more.

Yet people also were sinning in increasingly evil ways. Lamach took two wives. Lamach killed a ‘young man’. This evil grows so much so that by Genesis 6 God declares:

The LORD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And the LORD regretted that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart.
Genesis 6:5–6 ESV

We come to the beginning of Genesis 11 and see the same things again. Here, after a broad genealogy and before the genealogy of Shem and his holy line, we see humanity and their works again. We see here in this progression another story of humanity and their beautiful creativity, but our sad choice to take that beauty and make it into sin.

On its face, Babel may seem like a random story thrown into Scripture simply to explain a reality we all have seen—people have different languages. Everyone rightly wonders why it is this way. How did that happen? But even though the specifics of this story are new (it’s about a tower and languages), our section today is really a repeat of what we have seen already in Scripture. This is not only a fun tidbit of information to satisfy our curiosity.  I think we are meant to get more knowledge of our God and his heart for us from this section. But we may miss that if we don’t see how things are repeating. This isn’t déjà vu for no reason. God is helping us to see:

The Same Plan AND More of the Plan

The Same God AND More of God

Let’s step through this passage and see how God is retelling things through the story of Babel that we might know him more and see his heart more.

Genesis 11:1–3

Let’s start with Genesis 11:1-3:

Now the whole earth had one language and the same words. And as people migrated from the east, they found a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there. And they said to one another, “Come, let us make bricks, and burn them thoroughly.” And they had brick for stone, and bitumen for mortar.
Genesis 11:1–3 ESV

As Noah’s family continues to grow and multiply, the people leave the mountains where the ark came to rest. [Image] They all come down from the mountain into the valley in Shinar, in part of Iran, and they stop. Likely this was a fertile valley right after the flood, and a much better place to live than a mountainside.

And they were living the dream! Imagine for a moment everyone you have ever known, all living in one place, working together. Now for some of you, especially if you came from a small town, that may sound exactly like what you left! But there is often a nostalgia for many people and even a desire that things could be awesome if we all just lived together with people we know. Today is a day of the new farm-steading movement where families are trying to make a compound on acreage together to live out their chicken, cucumber, and corn-filled dreams! THIS was the largest family farmstead you may have ever seen!

And it was working well. They were not only living together, but they were being creative together. They learned how to make bricks by baking mud in the sun and how to use bitumen (sticky petroleum-based goo from the dead animals and trees after the flood) to build houses and structures. These were likely a huge upgrade from what anyone had before the flood (probably just tents), and they were excited to make anything they could together.

And there is a version of what was happening in Shinar at Babel that could have been amazing. It could have been exactly what they should have been doing to follow God’s plan. Remember what God said to Adam and Eve:

And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”
Genesis 1:28 ESV

This was the first great commissioning of God’s people. Adam and Eve were to image God by spreading and taking his image—in themselves and through his ways—out over the entire earth. It is one way we still take part in God’s plans for this world even today.

This is the same plan that God reiterated to Noah as he renewed his covenant with Noah:

And you, be fruitful and multiply, increase greatly on the earth and multiply in it.
Genesis 9:7 ESV

If mankind was using this city—Babel—as a launching point, a place from which to begin to move out and fill the earth, to make God’s glory known and for everyone, everywhere to see and come to God more, that would have been a great plan. They were learning. They were growing. They were making new technology and banding together. That could have had an awesome effect for conquering and filling this world for God and his glory!

But that wasn’t their goal.

Then they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be dispersed over the face of the whole earth.”
Genesis 11:4 ESV

Their goal was not to build this city to launch out on their mission from God. Rather, they built this city to DEFY God’s commission. They were trying to NOT be sent out over the whole earth. They didn’t want to separate from their friends, their family, those they knew and loved. They didn’t want to take part in filling this earth, subduing it, and having dominion. Even worse, they didn’t want to make much of God. Rather, they wanted to glorify themselves. They wanted a NAME for themselves, when they were to be working for the name of Yahweh to be praised.

This is a repeat of Genesis chapters four and five. God’s plan has been the same from Genesis 1 to Genesis 10. God has called his people to go out and have dominion and fill the earth with his glory as his mobile image bearers. He reiterated this plan to Noah and his family after the flood. God had the same plan, but people didn’t want anything to do with it.

Application

Maybe Babel is a story about us more than we think. John Lennon, in his song Imagine, wrote:

Imagine – John Lennon

Imagine there's no heaven
It's easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us only sky
Imagine all the people living for today

Imagine there's no countries
It isn't hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people living life in peace

You may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope some day you'll join us
And the world will be as one

Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man
Imagine all the people sharing all the world

You may say I’m a dreamer
But I’m not the only one
I hope some day you’ll join us
And the world will be as one

John Lennon may have thought this was only a dream or a vision, but history had seen it before. This was Babel. People together, trying to be as one. People shedding religion and their God-given mandate to spread and make much of GOD across this earth. People banding together with all their effort and possessions to make themselves gods so they might forget their true creator.

Sadly, people working together as sinners without God in their lives and without following his plan does not lead us to a better world. Our sin means we push further from God, and consequently, a life that would glorify him. Instead, we seek to only glorify ourselves. And we see this still today.

Think for a minute about you and me. Everyone in this room lives better than kings and queens of most of the world for most of history. We have running water. Food stored in refrigerators and cupboards. GPS and Apple Maps. We can drive hundreds of miles in a day to visit loved ones far, far away. We have air conditioning on 100-degree days! We have access to the knowledge of thousands of people stored in an easy-to-access, online manner. We can build buildings much more impressive than anything those at Babel even dreamed.

But what does that advancement, what does all that working together and progress tend to encourage us to do every day? I don’t know about you, but my comfort doesn’t make me more likely to go out, to engage others, and to spread the beauty of God. More often than not, it makes me think about me. My desires. My comfort. My idolatry of myself.

Now, don’t get me wrong! All of the amazing things we have all around us COULD be used to connect outwards, to spread, subdue, and have dominion for the glory of God. No different than Babel could have used their progress for good. But I don’t use it that way as often as I think I might or could. What about you?

Do we remember this amazing calling God has given us? This amazing commissioning that started in the garden, that was renewed with Noah, and is retold again by Jesus?

All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.
Matthew 28:18–20 ESV

We are still called to spread. Not only to fill the earth and subdue it, but to fill it with the knowledge of God in his living and breathing disciples. Disciples of Jesus! Mobile temples of the very presence of God across this entire earth! That was always the goal; we just see it more clearly now in the New Covenant.

Here at Babel, we are seeing that God’s plan in his commission of his people starting in Genesis one is still his plan for Noah and his grandchildren, and still his plan for us today. This is not a moment where we necessarily see more of the plan, but rather a moment to wrestle with the plan. Do we really see that God’s plan is still the same for us today? When we look at the people of Babel, do we see ourselves? Do we see the same temptations you and I face today in wanting to use our creativity, our advancements, our togetherness more often as an excuse to huddle up and make much of ourselves, more than using it to look outward to find others and show them our God in Jesus Christ?

Genesis 11:4–9 – More of God

If it is true that Babel is largely a repeat of people and how we act with the same plan and the same goals from God, perhaps we should be expecting that we will see more of God’s character and his heart for us in this account. Perhaps we are meant to see and have a redoubling of our hearts towards God’s plan but also find that we see more of him and how he is helping us to do that here, through his care of the people of Babel.

Let’s look at where this account continues:

And the LORD came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of man had built. And the LORD said, “Behold, they are one people, and they have all one language, and this is only the beginning of what they will do. And nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them. Come, let us go down, and there confuse their language, so that they may not understand one another’s speech.” So the LORD dispersed them from there over the face of all the earth, and they left off building the city. Therefore its name was called Babel, because there the LORD confused the language of all the earth. And from there the LORD dispersed them over the face of all the earth.
Genesis 11:5–9 ESV

In this short section, I think we see three amazing things about God. We see that our God:

God Intimately Sees

God Rightly Assesses

God Cares to Help

All things we have seen before in Genesis!

God Intimately Sees

God is so concerned with what is going on that he comes down to earth to see what is going on for himself. This is another moment like Genesis 2 and 3 where God walked with Adam and Eve in the garden. The eternal Son of God with his people, and here he comes to be with his people again.

In the garden, he came down and walked in the garden, having already known what Adam and Eve had done. Yet he came that they might SEE that he knew all that was happening and loved them. Similar here, we see that our God intimately sees and wants us to know he understands the situation at Babel.

Aside: there is no way to read the Bible and think that our God is like the “watchmaker God” many think he is. He didn’t just make things like a watch, wind it all up, and let it go only to watch us from above like an entertaining TV show. God is intimately walking through this life with us. He is here and concerned with our lives and everything we are doing.

God sees, and he knows us intimately. He sees and knows everything we do. Sadly, that often means he sees and knows our sin. But he sees us intimately, nonetheless.

God Rightly Assesses

And again, like in Genesis, God rightly assesses what has happened. God doesn’t come down to see things because he doesn’t know; rather, he comes so we can know his assessment. And God declares what he is seeing at Babel:

Behold, they are one people, and they have all one language, and this is only the beginning of what they will do. And nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them. Come, let us go down, and there confuse their language, so that they may not understand one another’s speech.

God sees what humanity is doing. Because they all can work together, there is no limit to what they will do. And that statement is not jealousy from God. He is not worried they (or we) will ever truly challenge him in their quest to make much of themselves. [Images] No matter how tall a building they built (or we build), nothing compares to the God who makes all things out of nothing. The God who made stars and solar systems as well as single-celled organisms and you.

Rather, what God is “assessing” is that there is no limit to how far humanity will keep going in their SIN. Just like Adam and Eve were marred with the problem of sin after taking the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, so too, humanity's unity in their language and sameness was going to be a perpetual and growing problem for them post-flood.

God rightly sees here the problem and rightly assesses what people have done and will continue to do.

God Cares to Help

Neither of those characteristics is new to us. We have seen this same loving heart from God in Genesis three. God’s desire was to come to Adam and Eve and see what they were doing. His desire was to come and acknowledge their sin and declare rightly what has happened, even if they couldn’t see it for the sin that it is. But God’s desire to come and see and assess is also so he can demonstrate that he cares to help us. He isn’t a distant God. He is a God who is here to care for his people.

In the garden, God’s solution to care for his people was to make sure Adam and Eve couldn’t get back to the tree of life and live forever. We talked about how that was loving care from God to make sure we would not stay in this sinful condition forever. The older I get and the more I see my sin, the kinder that act seems. Death is an enemy but also a gracious freeing from this body of bondage in sin.

But here, at Babel, we see something different. God doesn’t just kick them out. They are no longer in Eden. They will no longer live forever, so that isn’t a solution or a help. But God does care to help them.

So the LORD dispersed them from there over the face of all the earth, and they left off building the city. Therefore its name was called Babel, because there the LORD confused the language of all the earth. And from there the LORD dispersed them over the face of all the earth.”
Genesis 11:5–9 ESV

If you remember, in God’s renewed covenant with Noah, he had promised to never wipe out humanity in our sin again.

And God said, “This is the sign of the covenant that I make between me and you and every living creature that is with you, for all future generations: I have set my bow in the cloud, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and the earth. When I bring clouds over the earth, and the bow is seen in the clouds, I will remember the covenant that is between me and you and every living creature of all flesh. And the waters shall never again become a flood to destroy all flesh. When the bow is in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is on the earth.
Genesis 9:12–16 ESV

[Image] The bow, a warrior’s weapon (the same word used here), is set up on the shelf, no longer pointed down at us but resting. Maybe even more accurately, it is pointing up at God. He promises he will not wipe us out in our sin. He promises he will provide a solution. But then, what is he to do? How does he help humanity here at Babel? As humanity begins to sin in the same ways of Genesis five and six, becoming more set against God, what is he to do if he has promised he will never destroy humanity again?

God steps in and confuses people. What may at first seem like simply a story explaining different languages is really an account of God’s steadfast love and mercy to us and all of humanity. God’s love and mercy to save us from ourselves, even if it means confusing and frustrating us.

And this was no small confusion. There was no curious sitting around and pointing at a stone and trying to figure out what each person was saying so they could once again understand each other. This confusion instantly led to division that meant people chose to pull apart. To move away. And in doing so, because of the confusion, they took part in the plan God had for them all along. God was using confusion and confounded plans to HELP his people.

Application

I am guessing that even if you have never thought about how the confusion of languages was God’s grace and mercy for those at Babel, you have experienced the very same character of God in your life.

I have had multiple times in my life where I have not had resolution to confusing conversations with people I have called dear friends. Confusion so deep we still have not found resolution or restoration. I have had multiple times in my life where I have done “everything right.” And yet, despite my intentions or desires, things didn’t pan out like I thought they would.

When we were newlyweds, Katie and I invested five thousand dollars with a Christian friend who was investing in building houses. This was in the early 2000s, a great time to be in the housing market in Boise. Yet it didn’t work. The investment failed, and this friend moved away (I think out of shame of failing), and we haven’t ever heard from him since. I’m not mad at all about that anymore. But for a couple that often only had a couple of hundred dollars in our bank account, that was not a small problem.

I know many of you have much harder moments of confusion. Houses lost to fire. The loss of children and loved ones. Divorces. Lost jobs. Broken friendships.

To receive confusion from God may seem odd. We read in 1 Corinthians that:

For God is not a God of confusion but of peace.
1 Corinthians 14:33 ESV

God himself is not confused. He perfectly knows what he is doing, and he is only leading us to peace. He has a perfect plan. As we have quoted often in Jeremiah lately:

For I know the plans I have for you, declares the LORD, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope.
Jeremiah 29:11 ESV

Yet even if God isn’t confused, we often are. And that may be okay. Jesus often didn’t know what was coming next. He often had to leave a town for another place when it seemed like he should have stayed. He would leave one shore of the Sea of Galilee to escape the crowds and pray to find another crowd waiting on the other side. Jesus’s disciples were often bothered and baffled by this. They themselves were often confused at what Jesus was doing. Jesus could have felt frustrated at these changes and his disciples’ confusion, but he trusted the Father:

Truly, truly, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of his own accord, but only what he sees the Father doing. For whatever the Father does, that the Son does likewise.
John 5:19 ESV

Jesus trusted the Father and followed him wherever he sent him. Jesus leaned into the confusion and trusted in the Father’s plan.

The conclusions we could make from Babel are that God was being jealous and mean. He didn’t want the people of Babel to have something good. But when we see the repeat of the problem of sin and how people continue to abandon God’s plans for their own plan, we see the story in a different light. We see that our tendency, humanity’s tendency, is to avoid living in God’s plan. Sometimes even without knowing how badly we are missing the plan. Sometimes we need help we won’t understand, and that will likely confuse us.

Perhaps, like with Babel, we should see our momentary confusion here in this lifetime not as God’s punishment, but God’s graciousness to keep moving us and the plan forward. Perhaps confusion is often a grace and a feature of how God is helping us and not a punishment.

Conclusion

I think Babel is much more a story for all of us than we might have first thought. We are seeing:

The Same Plan AND More of the Plan

The Same God AND More of God

And we are seeing our God:

God Intimately Sees

God Rightly Assesses

God Cares to Help

At each step, we are seeing more clearly the plan, and at each step we are seeing more clearly our God’s love for us even in the things that don’t make sense.

Babel is our story. A story about our pursuit of sin even amidst the blessings and graces God gives us. God had just saved this family through a flood. And yet they still begin to pursue their own glory. How true is that of you and me? How often have we seen God’s grace in our lives only to turn back to our own desires and glory? Babel may be a story of our need to accept the confusion as—quite often—God’s plan to help us get back on his track for our life. A way he helps us to take part in the project he has, where he wants, how he wants, and for his glory.

I don’t know about you, but the confusion that is my life can ONLY MEAN that there is a God who loves me. Nothing about this should work! In my sin, I should have derailed my life years ago. And by my plan, this is where I wouldn’t be in a thousand years. Yet in God’s wisdom, this life has only shown me more of God and his love for me AMIDST the confusion. And I already see glimpses of how this will work out only for good for me in Jesus!

Maybe we are more like those at Babel than we originally thought. But we can trust that God is for us most fully as we come to Jesus. Jesus, the one who—when he came back to his disciples—spread out all of Scripture before them and explained their confusion. Jesus, God himself, who came to his people to see their problem, to assess the situation, and show that he cared to help. Jesus is the answer to the plan and the greatest expression and embodiment of God we will ever know.

God is kind to give us small glimpses of how confusion is resolved in this lifetime. Sometimes we see those confusing moments in our life begin to make sense. God does the same for us with Babel. But notice what I said there—God shows us how it is resolved, not necessarily how it is fixed. That is exactly what we see in Revelation 7:

After this I looked, and behold, a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, with palm branches in their hands, and crying out with a loud voice, “Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!”
Revelation 7:9–10 ESV

God doesn’t erase the language differences. Rather, he uses this great voice crying out, in many different languages, to bring him glory! The confusion was used to magnify God’s greatness. It shows how great our God is to work THROUGH these different peoples and languages. Perhaps, if God can do that, we can trust that he is even able to resolve any of the confusions that we have today! He already has shown us his solution for our greatest confusion—how can a holy God allow sinners back into his presence? We see that solved in his grand plan through our faith in Jesus Christ!

Perhaps today, in any confusion we may have because of our partial knowledge, in any confusion we may have because of our sinful perspective, we are called to cry out in worship to our God that he might receive glory IN our situation or confusion, knowing where we have put our hope. That we hope within the confusion by worshipping our God through the problems. We trust him that his plan is being done in our lives whether we fully see and understand it or not.

Perhaps in a room with hundreds of people still unaware of all the things God is doing, he will be more glorified in this reality—worship amidst the confusion—than if we understood everything perfectly now. That's just like Revelation 7: God might receive more glory from us worshipping him that way today than he would otherwise.

So we come back to the story. We repeat it. We have déjà vu again!

God’s plan is good. HE himself is holy and righteous and FOR us. And we are called to rejoice in that plan through Jesus Christ. We may still be wrestling with sin. We may find ourselves confused by God’s plans at many different turns. But we can still hope in the God who has seen us, has assessed us rightly, and has shown how much he cares for us in Jesus. And we can worship that God even now!